Feel Good Reformer

Hi everyone. I have Nicole with me today. We're just gonna workout. Move with us, come on down. You will need for this class a magic circle, and that's all.

So let's go ahead and begin. We're on balanced body reformers. I think everybody let's do start with our magic circle. Step your feet through it. Put that ring right above the outside of your knees.

So with class today, starting with our headrest flat, we'll be opening up our spine with some pelvic curl and some articulation. Just get what you need out of class today or out of this session. Take a nice full breath through your nose. I'm gonna have us do about five breaths just preparing. I know what I wanna focus on with.

My back is feeling it wide, not shortened and arched but really long and wide. So there's lots of room for my lungs to expand, my muscles to stretch, my joints to open up. Just feeling your relationship to your mat, both across your shoulders where your back is, the foot bar with your feet, and your head and the back of the skull. Let's take one more breath together. Here we go.

On the exhale, I'm gonna have us go right up into pelvic curl. We have three red springs on, everyone, for the pelvic curl. You can have all of them on if you'd like. I just don't want us to have too little to push out with. We're gonna hold this pelvic curl for a moment.

Take a breath for the bridge. Exhale, begin coming down with the upper back. Take your time. This is your time for your body. Trying to get as much mobility and ease in your spine as you can.

Take another breath in and exhale. You may want another full breath cycle to rise back up or continue going a little higher. Just check that your chin isn't jammed down on your throat. You wanna look right up to the ceiling here, breathing in, and exhale. See if you can get that articulation to start way up at the upper back, and mobilizing every vertebra at a time or the joints one at a time, all the way to a neutral level position.

Take an inhale. Exhale again, feeling the back of the legs, the inner thighs, maybe some around the side of the hips. You can use the back of your arms. See how many places we can wake up. Inhale at the top and exhale again, upper spine.

Nice and sequential. Just paying attention too if there are some sticky spots. Just note them don't get too caught up on what it its. Just note it, let's take one more. Knees reaching out in the direction of the foot bar in line with your second or third toes.

From here, let's rotate the pelvis. You can choose either right or left. I'm staying pretty high in the bridge. I'm just taking the pelvis, rotating it around the top of the femur hands, and then come to neutral or level, and then go the other way. I have a slight pull out on the magic circle each side a few times.

We're getting a sense of lumbar sacral movement in a different plane. Rotation, let's do one more each side. You might feel stretch in one side and contraction differently on the other. Breathing in, exhale as you start to unroll our spine. We are unrolling our spins all the way down until we're at the bottom.

We're gonna make a change now and put the magic circle between the knees. Then do a couple more bridges there. But I like us all this time come down away from the shoulder blocks a little bit and hold the arms out to the sides, like a T. Alright, still with the back of the shoulders pressing the mat, take an inhale. You can contract your legs muscles a little to hold the circle, rolling up.

Now with our arm position, let's make soft fists, close hand. And I want us to send some reaching out wide. This is my right shoulder blade. This is my left shoulder blade. I'm thinking of widening those on my back.

And as we roll down, there might be more space for those ribs and spine bones to come through. Maybe opening things just a bit more. Inhale against, level pelvis, and contract. Exhale, rolling up. Feeling the energy distally out the hands, out the fist, take a breath, how you're standing on your feet, how this feels in your body, and one more will be fine.

Take a breath. (breathing loudly) And this time as we've come all the way down to a level position, I'd like us to take our ring away from our knees. And if anybody wants more spring, you can come up and add a little bit. I'm gonna stay with my three red. Okay.

Adjust your headrest back up. Now with the magic circle for footwork. Everyone, let's start in our Pilates V. Knees no wider than our shoulders, and hands on the outside of the magic circle, arms nice and straight up to the ceiling, and take just a couple little shoulder, shoulder blade slaps down on your mat. So you now whether they're up, protracted, or if they're flat back on the mat.

Let's keep them back, okay. Slowly stretch the carriage out. Just hold your self there. I'll take a quick peek up and reaffirm that we're nice and centered with our feet. We'll inhale as we pull the ring down to our chest and exhale as we stretch up.

(breathing loudly) and exhale. So, on the inhalation breath, even though we're pulling the ring to our chest, it's our chest staying down on the mat, our ribs staying down on the mat. We're trying to seek out how much more width we can put in our back. (breathes loudly) Two more. We have a slight press in against the magic circle with the arms and the hands.

Last one right here and just breath out. Make a change with the foot position to prehensile. Same in the beginning, stretch yourself out long. Check your leg alignment, it matters. Your nice and centered.

Inhale as we bend the knees to pull the ring to our chest and exhale as we stretch. (breathes loudly) So we're tracking those arm bones straight up. When we bend the elbows, the elbows are slightly veering out. Exhaling up and inhaling out. (breathes loudly) Three more.

Pelvis nice and heavy, nice and aligned. One more. Let's inhale right into the bar and hold as we exhale. Good, heels at the bar. Same entry, stretch out, check your alignment.

Arms nice and straight. Inhale, prepares, no it's not. Inhale as we bend and exhale as we stretch. So the legs are together nicely. There's a slight press in of the ring with our arms waking things up.

Inhale, pull in. Exhale, stretch out. Just notice how the relationship of the top of your shoulder and the shoulder rest as well. Your touching, but you're not getting bound up. You can always bring those shoulders down your body off the shoulder blocks, at the same time think of stretching your neck long and away.

We got on more, Nicole. Let's exhale and then bring it down, inhale, and hold. Okay. Step onto the balls of the feet again and parallel this time with the little space between the feet. We can check that, so we're in line with our sit bones.

One is to stretch out the same entry. Hold the ring right above the shoulders. Now, three counts to lower the heels, which is also three counts to lower our arms. We have down, two, three, and rise, two, three. And lower, two, three.

So, slight variation of the hand position. It may not make a whole lot of difference to you, but spread your fingers wide. Maybe the width across the fingers is echoing across your chest. The sense of width in your ribs. Lower, two, three, and lift, two, three.

A couple more times, and lift, and down, and lift. Same here. Let's just bend both of our knees and lower the ring down. Okay, good. Move on to some single leg, come on up.

I'm gonna do kinda unconventional, just drop off the middle spring right through the leg, come on down. No circle for this, and start our legs in a turned out V position, and extend one of your legs over your foot bar. Both legs are turned out. Just an easy movement, press the carriage just pretty light, so we can focus on more grace perhaps lifting and lower. We'll do eight of these, inhale and exhale.

Remember, just feel your body moving. You don't have to think of anything particular today. Let's enjoy. Last two. Last one.

Okay simple. Other side. Feels really good, alright. Here we go. I kind of agree.

(chuckles) Nothing wrong with simple at all. Four more. I did count, we did eight on the first side. I'm gonna explore, reaching those muscles long through your leg and out your toes, energetically out your toes. Last time, and in.

Okay, we're gonna come over to the right heel or one heel. You can choose which side. The other leg is in the table top, and push back about half way. And just be in this half, half range push out with that. Pushing leg.

Now we'll move the pulses here. So just down an inch, out an inch. Down and press. So as we're doing these little pulses, study where your pelvis is. What does it feel like?

Hopefully one side isn't lighter than the other. If you notice that, try to equalize that so you do have some equivalent weight. All right. A little faster, see if you could push and pull and push and pull, push and pull, push and pull, good. Four, three, two.

Now this one let's go all the way back, extend your top leg, flex that foot with a little external rotation. And I think we'll take three leg circles. So let's cross the midline, rounding up and cross and round and up. Then across around that other way for three. And that's it, point that toe.

You can bend the knee, come all the way in. So getting some work in our leg muscles, our thighs. So, other side, pushing carriages half way out, holding that, feel your pelvis. Okay, then we begin some slow-ish pulses. Again, this is your chance, check in on level pelvic weight.

We're really gonna need that for those leg circles. We'll go a little faster, up and down, and out and in. Out and in, push and pull for four, three, two. Last one, let's go all the way out, extend this leg with the heel that's flexed, ankle that's flexed, pushing through both sides. Three leg circles, one, and two, and three.

Other way. One, A lot of energy up the leg and down into the hip. That's plenty, and all the way in. Okay, great. Move away from the shoulder rest enough that you almost might be able to feel your fingers at the end here.

Place your feet on the foot bar, wherever they feel best, take a breath. Chin toward the chest. Peel your self up. Reach the arms very long as if you could touch your foot bar. Some of you have really long arms.

And then roll all the way back. So we're mobilizing the upper spine now. Inhale and exhale. Chin, cervical nod, rolling up. We're reaching, but we are coming up off the weight of the shoulder blades.

It's really nice. And lower back. Three more times. Simple, clean sound, and lower. So use our eyes maybe a little more.

Track straight out to your legs, looking right at the line of your legs, maybe to the top of the thigh to the knee, and lower back. Do the legs to the ceiling one more time. (breathing loudly) Reaching. All right. Lift the legs, just place the hands behind the thighs.

Pulling your legs, lift your chest a little higher. And not like we're gonna do a whole rolling, but we're just moving a little more circulation through. Yeah. So we're pressing the legs against the hands. We're definitely pulling the hands against the legs, a couple more.

That's plenty, we roll down. Okay, we go back. Make sure that you're right up against your shoulder blocks. We're on two springs. We're ready to go.

Hands in the straps. Let's bring our knees up and just start some easy movement of the arms. Simple, clean. Again, remember how we hold that magic circle. We notice our shoulder blades were nice and flat.

Same thing here. They remain flat on the mat. Wide across your shoulders, wide across your back. Okay, if you're a person who likes long fingers, you can stay with that. If you wanna play around and just feel something different, you can make a fist.

If you make a fist, just notice that the wrist doesn't flex at all or extend. Alright, I'm gonna keep on going for arm circles and then go down first. Externally rotate, get the stretch and up, and down. Three more this direction, so I'm thinking five. Like we warmed earlier with those fits, reach wide.

The shoulder blades going wide. Okay, let's reverse our five and out. Knuckles toward the hips. Knuckles toward the ceiling. So we'll be going back to do five more arm circles each way with a little variation of chest lift.

Alright, so let's go one more of this second direction. All right. So, reversing again, arms down. We'll also add our chest lift. As the arms come out to the side, head will go down.

Five each time. And curl, you can stay with that. You can also add leg extension on the chest lift. So I'm gonna add the leg extension. Come on down with the arm circle.

One more time. Good. And then the reverse. So, same thing. Open the arms first.

Chest lift as the arms come to the body. We'll keep our legs just for two reps. Arms open, chest lift. Arms come in. So you can stay with that or add the leg extension.

Here we go. Pulling that string deep into the body. Challenging our mind and coordination a little bit too. Last time like that. Okay.

Now, let's go back out to the arms out to a T. I want us to come up to the 100 position. Basically we were there already. But the arms are slightly different, right? So, the 100, we know they're here.

Let's keep it like this in pulse. (breathing loudly) Three, four, five. Two, three. Good. Trying to breath wide into your back.

Good. Four, two, three, four, five. Here's four. Two, three, four, five. One more breath cycle, four, five, and why does it feel so hard?

It's different. So our brain had to coordinate on something different. Yeah, I'm pumping the normal way, that's fine. Now let's add a little variation of the 100 again. Ready?

So knees to the table top. Let's curl to the regular 100 position. Arms flat this time. Open the legs, reach through. Close.

Come all the way down. Four more reps. One, trying to keep the carriage nice and still as you reach through. Three more. You have to establish a high enough chest lift in order to get those arms reaching through the legs.

Nice Nicole, yes, last time. Big reach of those arms. And two, and three, that is plenty. Okay. Yeah, set the straps down.

Wiggle away again. Hold on to the shoulder rest. I'm gonna, personal choice here, lower my head rest now. It's up to you. Yeah, okay.

Knees side to side. Here we go, pick a side. Lean your knees to that angle. Let's stretch both legs long and away. Pause for a second, make that top leg a little longer.

Pull both legs across the center. Rebend the knees, other way. So, it's the one on top, make that one just a little bit longer. Use your eyes, take a peek. Make sure that it's lined up.

Yeah. Alright, one more plain on each side. You're probably warm enough to go further in your range. Remember, simple, safe, clean. Okay, adding onto that, let's tilt over to the first side.

Extend both legs. And I want us just to do a small little, like a horse shoe down over to the other side, pause. Bring it to center and rebend the knees. Other way. To the side, legs extend, a little horse shoe, down around, pause.

Through the center, rebend the knees. First side again, and stretch. A little horseshoe down round to the center. Rebend the knees and just one more pattern to the side with the knees, extend both legs, our horse shoe, center, and rebend our knees. Okay, great.

Place the feet. Wiggle your hips back a little bit. Our magic circle is still close by. So let's gat that at the ready. Move your carriage back.

I like being able to take both feet up into the straps at the same time. It may be the prettiest entry, but at least my pelvis stays relatively organized this way, and I don't hike a hip, you know, to get one foot in. Yeah. Great. And now magic circle between those ankles.

Great. Start with your knees bent and feet flexed. Pelvis nice and level. And so some of us are probably getting a little stretched already in the back of the hips and hamstrings. Some of us maybe be not.

It's okay. It's you. Slightly engage your legs in on the circle. You might feel some shaking, some effort, some will wobble, that is okay. Alright, let's do these slowly.

We'll do eight of them. So that was our first one. We bend again. So initiate the movement out with your legs from the back of your legs. All right.

We are trying to keep the ring level and even. (breathes loudly) Most of us have a dominant leg. Some muscle in one of our sides is probably more dominant on one than the other. So if you start pushing more with one side, that's normal. But see if you can identify it, and if it's interesting to you to try to keep it even.

If it's interesting to you, it's interesting to me, that way our joints are aligning, right? We're moving our legs uniformly. Paying attention to the health and longevity in those joints. Yeah, one more time. Now, again, pretty simple but a little more intense.

If you bring your legs up, maybe to 90 degrees. Maybe you're someone who can come to 90 degrees of hip flexion. Pelvis should stay relatively flat here everybody. Engage the inner thigh, so hold the ring a little more firm, and lower the legs down to the point of your control. Alright, keep the the contraction of the inner thighs as you bring the legs back up.

This is a little bit more intense. Here we go. Breath matters. Holding it is not the best choice. Yeah, I think I'm expanding to the sides and the back of the ribcage as often as you can.

Let's take four more repetitions now, whatever feels best for your feet and ankles. Last two now. How are you feeling over there? Your feeling, feeling, feeling, good. Hold it.

Thank goodness. Now, a little faster, contract release, contract release, contract release, contract release. We have four more, yep. Three. That does it.

Two, and one. Okay, rebend them. Keep them in. Keep that ring in there until you don't need it anymore which is about now. Take it out.

Okay. Yeah. Lake circles. It's kind of always a nice little extra add on. These guys get a little sleepy from time to time.

So leg circles. If we begin at 90 again, if you're that person that can go to 90 with good pelvic position, let's take our circles down, level of control. Externally rotate here at the bottom open around. I think I'm going four each way. Well, we'll see.

I also wanna do some internal rotation today with our leg circles. So, perhaps will do five each way. I've got it. Okay. That was our five.

Now, we'll stay going down circles but turn in. Yeah, internally rotate the femurs, and try to stay internally rotated throughout the entire gait of the circle. Okay, yeah. Again, we woudn't train walking gait this way. We we'd actually try to help someone if their gate was this way.

But for some, it's a nice way to feel additional work and connection in muscles in the hip joints differently. If you're always working parallel or always working turnout, this never really get felt, right? So now, parallel. Let's go to the normal circles, meaning turn out a little at the top. Yep, down.

We come up the mid line and parallel. At the top, you can take that little external rotation. Down, parallel, and up. Turn out open. Just feeling some really clear hip joint motion.

Leg and hip, one more this way. Okay. Now turn in. Move the circles open, down, in and out. Five this way.

You may feel a little different type of stretch down the outside line of your legs through your ankles. Last time. All the way, and then bend both of your knees, come all the way, and then just pause. We have one more feet and straps I wanted to get to, which is the extended bow and arrow. Yeah, Peter Pan.

So, start with your legs straight out. We're gonna think about really being on a horizontal line level to the floor. Start opening both legs, choose one leg to bend. When you get your hold for a moment just take a peek at the bent leg that you did. And make sure that your heel is inline with you knee and not heel dropping in across your midline.

Exactly. That can maybe ensure that we're staying really level. And now bring both legs to the center line. We'll do one slow check in on the other side. Yep, so, heel in line with me, there we go.

Pelvis is pretty level. And then we can flow side to side because you're using your mind to keep that pattern clear. Four more total. Side to side. Let me try to go on a line that's horizontal to the floor.

parallel to the floor. Last time on this side and last time on this side. Great. Okay. Again, rest of the leg.

Are you read for some short spine. So our head rest is down if you put yours back up, but here we go. Start by extending those legs again. Today, I want just to take the first two very slow. We've just done a lot of intensity for the inner thigh and the back of the leg.

So see how deeply we can fold at your hip joints. Your bum will probably come up, that's okay. Now look at the straps on your feet. Try to keep your eyes here and start to peel up your back. Keep looking up at those toes.

Hopefully the carriage stayed nice and still. Bend your knees. You're still looking up at the straps on your feet. Keep those feet right there. Now, it's the spine again.

Spines turn. It's all about that. Moving it down. When you feel like you can't get anymore of your spine down, then let's go ahead and bring the feet down to our hips. We'll do another slow and extend.

So slowly taking hip flexion. Hopefully you're at that bumper and then reel your spine up, looking up at the straps on your feet. Nice, stretching your back. Inhale as you bend. Here we go, rolling down.

No one can see what I can see. I just have to share because it's pretty cool. There are three birds that are out there on the... (laughs) You can probably see it now because I just turned your attention to it. Let's keep moving here, short spine.

I think they're either having a party up there, creating a nest or something. It's kinda nice. Keeping it simple, noticing your environment, rolling your spine. Oh, it's watching us now. Two more, Nicole.

Only working as much in your body that you need to produce the movement keeping it simple. Last one. There we go. Spend another breath here. Flex those hips, frog position, deeper breath now.

And unrolling, unrolling. And once we get down, we've land, we can use our hands, reach in between the feet, almost like you're gonna do a seal or something from the mat. Exactly, take them off at the same time. There. Yep, so that our SI joint doesn't get torqued.

Yep, okay, come on up. We're gonna make our spring change now. We can take our foot bar down, and let's just use one red spring for this, Nicole. We'll turn and face the back of the reformer. No magic circle at this point.

So as if we'd kinda be getting ready for seated roll back, which we will be. Take your hands and make a slight little bicep curl with your straps. Okay, my knees are slightly apart. I'm not really too worried about that. Focus on sitting tall.

And if your shoulders are getting tired already. You can just simply lower that shape, that's fine. Breathe in. Let's take three roll backs. So just the arms come with us.

We're doing more articulation over that pelvis, widening through your back, pause when your down, breathe in, and exhale as we roll forward. The very top as you're on the sit bones rise higher on the back breathing in and again rolling down. Pause when you're there, take a breath. Pull in deeper to roll back up, sitting tall. One more plain one.

(breathing loudly) So the next round we'll add some bicep curl to it. So curling back again. Now-- Are my legs together or... Oh, are the legs together? You can have them a little apart or together.

Yeah, great question. Whatever feels best, how's that for an answer? Okay, so let's stay. Yeah, we're on our sacrum now. Extend your arms so that your arms will get straighter.

Let's breath in right there, exhale, now bicep curl. I want us to do eight or 10 of those. Alright, so we're at... The task on the abdominals has become a greater task. We're having to use stability basically and abdominal contraction to keep the background.

I'm going five more times. Five. Always pull in a little bit more, stomach to spine. I must think of keeping those ropes high. There's four, and open, last one, and we go 10.

And that's plenty, inhale, pause. Here's the clincher. Exhale, roll all the way up to sitting tall. And then change the arms. Alright, cross your legs, or you can have your knees bent.

I'm just gonna have us cross. I think this is great. So, distance from here to here is gonna be up to you guys, everyone taking class. If you want more challenge in the seated arm chest expansion, move your hips back. If you want a moderate work right now, you're just gonna stay about here, okay?

More of what we want is integrity of posture and shoulder position, and head and all that. So, breathing in as we move our arms back. Exhale as we move the arms forward. No further forward than the knees. Inhale.

Feel free to experiment with arm position. So I've just made more of a karate chop arm angle. Almost leading with my pinky fingers going back then my palms. It's okay to change that. The arms kinda slice down to go back.

Inhale down and back. Exhale forward. A couple more presses and a couple more presses. One. (laughs) And a couple more.

I'm kidding, that's it. Okay. Kinda got lost in like Karate Chop Land. Hook your straps, turn the face, and let's make a spring change for some single arm. I'm going down to a blue.

The single arm, you can choose what you like. Let's pick the strap that sit in front of us, exactly. And make a fist with it and put it right in front of the chest, other hand on the knee, and use that arm and kinda give it a little, a little something to do. Yeah, so the elbow is out. Now, not the full draw a sword, but what if we just pull and release.

Yeah, good. So what we both notice was our wrist wanting to do some flex and extend. That's not negative. It's just right now let's now do that. So see if you can keep your fist in a fixed position.

So focus on the rear shoulder. It's a lot smaller range. Smaller range of movement, yes. I feel more... I feel good.

I feel a lot too going on in this oblique side, which we should be. Kinda helping to hold this pretty steady. I've lost count again, I'm sorry. Lets go one more time. Counting.

Okay, other side. However, let's move this way. I know we can handle a little more load on the single arm with this. Same thing, opposite hand on knee, subtle fist. Now it'll only come to the middle of the chest.

Yeah, and then back out. And just comes right in front of the breast bone. Let's make sure we do eight. Sorry. And our shoulders are low.

We have long neck. We have knees that are pressed down. Five. Slow shoulder, six. Nice.

Last two. We'll add one extra movement here. I'm gonna keep us sitting this far away. Turn out, face, and then interlace both of your hands. We could choose this.

This could be an interesting thing, to either use the arm or move more light hand, I should say, in the strap. And I want us to use more of the abs and the back muscles to turn our trunk. Excellent. The arm is gonna help a little bit, but see if we can maximize by using most of our turning muscles in our torso. Right now we still have the strap in the hand.

We had for the single arm hug a tree. One more like this. Okay, but I wanna have us change hand. It's gonna feel different. So change, same thing though.

See what it feels like. I can't tell you what it's gonna feel like for you, but I know what it feels like for me. Two more. Oh yeah. Yeah.

I feel like I get just a wee bit more range, and that's because our lats are helping us rotate. Yeah, because they're part of our rotator group on our torso. Okay, other side. So we'll face away here. Alright, so it's first not the full draw sword, but the beginning phase of that.

So you've got a fist across your strap. Your other hand is across that knee, and then here we go, and we can exhale. We're working and keep that wrist stable, and we power this from the side of the deltoid, the back of the deltoid also. Let's go eight total. So I'm coming up on five and six.

Hopefully the torso nice and centered above the pelvis here. Seven and eight. Okay. Now changing hands, we need to move to the carriage end a little bit closer to the foot bar. Yep.

Opposite hand on knee. Single arm hug a tree, ready and go. So the fist again stops right in front of our chest. (breathes loudly) and I know you're seeing the back of both of us, but that is fine. Notice how we're keeping our shoulders though nice and low, and our torso centered above our pelvis.

Meaning we're not doing any rib movement there. Okay, two more, seven and eight. And then keeping the strap in this hand, rotate toward the strap. Interlace both hands. We do the forward trunk rotation with this hand position.

Same idea. We're trying to keep your torso above our pelvis. Two more with this hand position, low shoulders. If you can access some hip muscles to keep the knees pulled down, that's great. Okay, change handgrip, other side, and four more.

You'll probably sense a wee bit more range of movement, because the big back muscle, the lat, helps with trunk rotation. Exactly, one more time. There we go. And rest. How did we do?

Good? Yeah, alright. I would like us to keep a blue spring on, everybody, or the light one. And we'll get our box. Let's put it up, the long box.

We got a lot of blood flow in our arms. We'll do a couple more patterns here for our arms. Light spring is good. Lie on down. And I'd like us to put our chest right at the edge of the box almost where your under arms could fit right over the corners.

Reach ahead on the straps. We'll do a little pulling straps combo. I seem to like this one. Arms are long, legs are long. Gather those abdominals.

So let's do regular pulling straps one. Add a little upper back extension if you like. Now open the arms out to the T position. Close the T. Lower the arms.

And we're going to also lower my head a little bit. And again, so, rising through pulling straps one. Rotate, open out to the T. Really good in those deltoids. So move the arms back, and lower.

Three more times. Pull and lift. Externally rotate the arms. There's those knuckles reaching out again, those fists. Last two, and we'll thrown in a little extra tricep.

Focus on this next one. Nice Nicole. And pull. And open. So this time when we close the arms, I'll just keep them close.

And just four or five triceps exactly bend, stretch, bend, stretch. Eyes looking just beyond the end of the reformer out there. Two more and last time. It's plenty of straight arms. Bring the carriage all the way home.

Fantastic, okay. Hook the straps up. Step off to one side. I do want us to add a little more spring for this for ourselves, so keep the red on. I'm sorry, keep the blue on, but maybe squeak in a red also.

So we've got a fairly good amount of support. We won't face each other. You'll be looking back. Bridge down, grab the straps. Put your heels on the very furthest edge of the head rest.

Okay. Arms extended long and front. No more bicep curls. I'll just be right here to catch the strap tension. Take an inhale, and let's flex our spine back.

You'll notice that flexion of the spline, as you go a little bit further, yeah. Now we're moving the carriage because we're taking a little more curl. Bring one knee to a table top. Second knee to a table top. Good, arms are just gonna stay straight, and let's take ourselves down a little further, and up a little further.

Onto the sacrum. Just down and up. Yeah, you're getting ready for the teaser, facing the back. Excellent. The pelvic curls, what's moving these springs.

Two more. Okay. Stay on that sacrum extend our legs. It's actually a little easy on the side, isn't it? Kinda easy.

So with that, let's go back again. And up maybe a little higher, higher, higher, a couple more, and down, and up. One more, down, and up. Hold. Bend the knees.

Place the straps. Excellent. And then just hook them up, round your spine, just kinda shake the shoulders a little. Let's move our box now into the short box for a little short box. Aha! Okay.

So, short box, I do want us to use the ring for this series. So, loading up your spring is a little more so you have some support. Okay. And the way I like that yeah, feet in, ankles flex and really pulled wide against the straps. All right.

Great, here we are. We're on our short back series. If you notice that we've got two different box set up, that's fine. It's fine. Mine is in front of my shoulder rest.

Nicole has hers behind. She's a little taller than I am. Her legs are a lot longer than mine. This makes sense for me, and I think that makes sneeze for you. Arms reaching here.

Take an inhale. These will be small, four times more pelvic curl, why? Well, it's part of the work. Now, let's play with opposition. So even though we're rolling back, we have energy going that way on our ring, and we got this really wonderfully hollowed in part of our body, which means our back is nice and open.

That's a breath. Exhale and we come forward. Keep the tension on the strap. Dive your head toward that ring and sit up taller for three more. Nothing fancy.

Remember this is simple, keeping it simple. Clean and simple, breathe in, and exhale. Good, Nicole. Wow, you came up a lot taller. I just woudn't tell you what I saw.

Yeah, look at how much further you're going back now. See? Feel good. Reach and lift. I wanna sit as tall as you so I'm kinda (mumbles).

And rolling back. Let's pause. I lied, let's make it a little harder. Take the arms up, inhale. Exhale, arms down for four more of those.

Inhale, holding the integrity. I can't talk and do this. That's why it got so quiet. Last time. Oh, okay, rolling up.

Okay, so for flat back hinging today. Start with the ring closer to the chest, a little bit of engagement of the squeeze. So same thing, hinging. When we come up, reach our arms forward. So as we inhale, just like we did on foot work.

The ring comes to us, our back stays wide, no arch. Good for you, exhale. Inhale, no arch, but length. Yes Nicole, there you go, that's it. Two more.

You can tell, right? Exhale. That's it, one more. And exhale. To the window we turn.

You turn to your window. Inhale, exhale, center. So now if this ring were a bullseye, our sternum would be pointing right to and connected right to the center of the bullseye. We wouldn't turn our arms more than if the trunk hits the rub hits the spine. Good.

Alright, one more each side. And last time this way. Excellent, hinge back again. Now let's add the arm movement five times. We're gonna take the arms up, and bring them down, and bring them up, and bring them down.

Go for length. One more. Wonderful and round, round, round. Wonderful, put that down. Let's put it off to the side.

Quick hamstring stretch. Pick up one of your legs. Hold behind. Let's play with two different ideas here. If we start this first spine shape inflection.

Yeah. Level hips, good check there. And then work the knee extension with our back in round just so we can feel the difference between this hamstring stretch. It feels pretty good to me on my body right now. Versus...

Surprise, surprise, up here. Now I am gonna make at a hand hold change because this I don't think I can hold my spine as full of integrity. Or what if I try to? I just know that my knee extension isn't the same, or my leg extension isn't the same. Yeah.

Okay. we did four, five. That's all I want us to do. Simple. We can do a full tree series another time.

Okay. Under. Yeah. This way we get to know about ourselves and difference things. Change it up a little bit, flexion or extension, and see what you have more of.

It's probably difference from leg to leg. Three and four and five. Yeah, alright. Versus. I know for me too, surprise, surprise.

I have to go in a lot more focused on my back muscles, like you're doing too. And I might not be able to get the knees extended, but that's okay. I can always improve it. I think I see Kristy outside. She is, she's outside. Is she outside

taking pictures? (mumbles) Kristy. Okay, that's it, five, five, five. How funny, she's checking on it. Okay, let's move our...

A little distraction there. Let's move our box away. Yeah. Now, coming up to some standing on the reformer. Some outer hip, inner hip.

So we will begin and only do one red spring on this series. So take everything else we don't need away. And I am wanting us to use the ring. You don't have to for this series, but I would like us to, for you and I. Stepping up.

We'll work on the adduction first. The inner thigh first. Sorry. You're fine. Ta-dah! Like that.

Perfect. Okie-dokes. Okay. So making sure that we, as we stand, as you stand up, take a look down. You want your big toes on that same plane here.

Okay, legs nice and parallel. And I think for this first round, we'll just hold our ring in front of our chest. With the carriage fold in, we'll do five movement. Simple open and close. Three time simple, because I remember we went trunk rotation too with this.

Here's there plain ones. Okay, the next three, as you move the carriage open, rotate toward your foot bar leg. There's the bulls eye and center. Our belly button in, stirring right in line with that middle of the circle. And turn.

Voila! That's it, that's all we need to do. Lower this down, wiggle this foot in. Stay here though. Right into the edge, put the ring behind you, behind your hips and your hands, squat the knees, pitch forward, and shift most of the weight onto the foot that's on the platform side. So this foot should be pretty light, okay?

So now, outer hip control. Wow. So that little banging that I'm doing, I wanna pitch forward more. There. We went lower.

Push now more from the side of the hip. Now how about the arms. If we were on the ice, we'd be using our arms maybe to propel. We're not on ice. But use your arms back there, reach back long.

Let's take four. Our chest is open and three. I haven't ice skated in years. I don't even know what would happen. And that is plenty.

Okay, however, stand all the way up. Put it in front, and let's just do a roll down holding that circle, just take an easy roll down. Roll back up. Okay. Now step down.

I'll walk around first, and then you can for the other side. Yeah. Alright, so we have three repetitions just holding the ring in front of us and added three with final rotation, here we go, sliding the carriage out, bringing the carriage home. Sliding it out, bringing it home. Last one.

The next three, turn toward the foot bar leg. It's not a big movement. We want the pelvis to stay centered. It's the upper body. Turn.

Return. Last one for inner thigh. Lower the arms. Bend that standing knee. Bring that foot in.

Bring behind us. Arms are nice and long. Most of the weight on the stable platform side, and here we go. Push, return. You can hinge greater in the hips.

You can lower your chest more. (breathing loudly) Good, four more, and in. Three, two. Last one. And then standing tall, bring in both hands just because you don't want to drop it.

Roll yourself down. You can actually put it on the floor once you're there, the edge of the mat of the carriage. Roll all the way back up. And then I want us to finish this session with some one weight-bearing exercise on our hands, but also with some back extension. So down stretch.

I like down stretch on two springs. My two red springs feel really good to me. Yeah. Good, so on our knees, hands on the bar. Concentrate on the connection of your feet against the blocks.

Hips are reaching forward and your chest is nice and lifted. Alright, so we want to finish it with this sense of openness and uplift. Here we go. Inhaling, stretch those hips down. Exhaling up.

Five times total. Make each one count. Up, up, up, up. So also stretch for the abs, stretch for the hip flexors. Last two.

Up, up, up. Last time. And maybe a soft cat back. Okay. I feel like I've got my whole body worked, how about you?

Good? I'm good. Alright, thanks Nicole. Thanks everybody.